Concentrating primarily on Celia Dropkin, Rachel Korn, Anna Margolin, and Kadya Molodowsky, Ruth Whitman will conduct a “guided reading tour” through Yiddish poetry written by women who defied, in their own ways, the traditional male hierarchy.

The great 20th-century Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva came to literary maturity during the Russian Revolution, and her poetry was praised by Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Rilke. Nina Kossman will read from the original texts and her own translations

T.S. Eliot said the Elizabethan stage was perfumed by the work of Seneca. However, these Roman verse plays are virtually unknown today. Four distinguished translators - David Slavitt, Kelly Cherry, Rachel Hadas and Stephen Sandy - will discuss the relevance of his work and the translation process, and join in a reading in belated honor of the Ides of March.

Constantine Contogenis, co-editor of Brief Songs of the Kisang, poems written by Korean courtesans, will read and discuss the rare blend of emotional freedom, ironic perspective, and technical mastery of these little-known works. He will also present a new, usable theory of literary translation.
The kisang (sometimes called “skilled women”) were lower-class Korean women who were forced into artistic (and sometimes sexual) servitude to the 16th and 17th century Korean governments.